A LITTLE BACKGROUND

When I left the IRS in 1990 I was a GS-7 step 5 permanent employee, and I went back as a GS-4 step 1 seasonal employee. I was hired in tax accounts doing important but repetitive, boring, mind numbingly boring work. I applied for everything I could find and I got picked up in Collections in a building I did not even know existed. It was in downtown Fresno and it was beautiful. A far cry from the Fresno Service Center on the outskirts of town and clear across town from me. It took me almost 25 minutes going to work at 5:30 AM, and almost 45 minutes trying to fight the getting off work traffic coming home. It took me maybe 5 minutes to get to my new job at the Compliance building and I could come home for lunch to check on things everyday if needed.
The job I applied for was a GS-5,6,7 so I applied for all three, since I qualified due to my prior employment. But it hadn't caught up yet and I assumed I was hired as a GS-5. When I was told it was GS-7, I almost fainted. I also got my steps back and within 2 months I was offered a permanent position. I had everything back that I had when I left. And when I went from that GS-4 step 1 job to the GS-7 step 4, my salary almost doubled. Overnight. I felt like I'd won the lottery.

We had been living on so little for so long and almost lost our home three times in 2002, 2003 and 2005. Shoot! I felt like a millionaire. I was thrilled to say the least. Now it was worth me having to be away everynight, (oh yea, I went swing shift, which I really liked. I loved my job, I enjoyed my fellow employees and I even really liked my managers.

This Section 1203(b) of the RRA of 1998 was instituted during the time I did not work for the IRS. There was a little blurb in the new hire Standards of Ethics pamphlet you get, but there is no way I knew that there were ten things, not even really bad things, that require mandatory termination and cannot be mitigated except by the IRS Commissioner. And it never even reaches him really, because there is a board of some kind that makes the decision if they think he should even consider mitigation. So, I guess that isn't really, "only can be mitigated by the Commissioner",, huh?

I had a job I really enjoyed for the first time in my life from January 2009 until May when I received a bunch of phone calls from that Love 4 Canines group. At work, at home, on my cell. Finally one said, Carolynn I have some good news for you and wish you would call. She gave me a time she would call me if I could be available too. I waited, she called and I knew after the first few minutes that she was either in TIGTA's office or they were at her home and she was being coached on every word she said. It was true! They were sitting right in her living room, and proudly told me that at our first hearing/meeting in September of 2009. I talked to two managers about what had happened and worried from May until TIGTA notified my manager of the hearing I had to attend. I worried more from then until I received a Notice of Proposal to remove me from the Service in March 2010. Got that one in the mail the very day I got out of the hospital after major, (robotic no less), surgery due to what all the continual stress did to my digestive system. I was so tied up inside they had to remove three feet of my intestines. Even though my doctor wanted me to take six weeks off, I talked him into letting me go back after two. I used up all my sick leave by then and wasn't granted advanced leave, I am sure, due to my impending termination. I qualifed for the advanced sick leave in every way a perm employee can, and this was not even a pending disiplinary action at the time. My manager approved it but hers did not. This one that would not approve my leave was one of the deciders of the death sentence to my livelihood.

Kinda how I felt!

The union requested an oral reply and that was finally set for June 2010. Everyone thought it went well and nobody thought I would be terminated for my silly email. I let everybody I knew read it and none thought it sounded like a threat to have someone audited. That is not even something that I could have done as I had no input into the IRS auditing decisions, as I had informed the lady from Love 4 Canines when she called me in the TIGTA "set up" phone call.
Finally, on the 19th of October 2010, my manager came over and gave me the deciding official's decision. I would be terminated as of October 22, 2010. The official date would be the 25th. Pay period ended on the 23rd, but I got charged all the insurance and retirement that kept being taken out the next pay period even though I didn't work a minute of it. That got sucked out of my annual leave refund. They do have their ways.....

The deciding official was, by the way, the same man who had only a few weeks prior contacted my manager by email to say that he wished he had more employees like myself. I had written a response to some complaints other empoyees made on a "talk to the Director" page in our newletter saying that I thought we had a great job, sitting in a nice air conditioned office, making good money and that we could be out digging ditches,

O.K. Now, the deadly sin that took away what I went to work every single day to achieve. (oh, except for that 2 weeks and a day that I was in the hospital getting my guts cut out.

OK, are you ready for it. Ready? OK,

Did - I - mention - where - I - work?

Those are the six words that took the rest of my life with any kind of security away from me and my family.

Six little smart assed sounding words that were taken out of context, but nobody really saw anything else in the email I sent to my accuser. Just those six little words. Not even my words, but added in by my husband.

This was a personal issue, not a taxpayer/IRS issue. It all took place from my home, not the workplace and those six stupid, smart assed words were only meant to qualify a prior statement. I'd said that the people who allow non-profits to be non-profit would probably be interested in the adoption policies of her organization. Just stating a fact. They probably would be interested. Nothing about me letting them know, let alone in any way initiating an audit. That thought must have come from her guilty conscience. Because it didn't come from me. It's not my fault if she has reason to believe or be afraid of an impending investigation into her business affairs. I had no intention of leading her to believe I was going to do anything but check with other animal rescue operations and see what their policies were compared to her idiotic ones that prevented the animals from getting homes which was what she was supposedly in business to do! (sorry for the super long sentence, I really do know better)

This was an animal rescue/adoption situation, and yes, I did tell this person that I was going to contact some of my friends still active in Animal Rights and see what they thought about the way her operation was run.

If you run an animal rescue group and are trying to find "forever" homes for the animals, it seems to me that you would want to adopt as many of them as possible and not put ridiculous restrictions, such as you live farther than 50 miles from where the animals were rescued. Obviously, there weren't enough homes for them there, or they would have been in them, not on the streets or in shelters where this group got them. To turn down over $900.00 for a couple of mutt puppies when you say that you are in dire need of cash donations, food, blankets and foster homes? More tomorrow, can't relive much more of this for now. I do have alot of it in the appeal that never was so maybe can cut and paste for awhile. You can take a break too. See the pictures below and read the worthless trivia and I promise to be back when you are done.